


Dark Circles

by nyssaoftraken



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 19:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5940949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyssaoftraken/pseuds/nyssaoftraken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully discover what it is that keeps them up at night: each other<br/>Set sometime during season 5</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Circles

(this is literally my first fic in years so please be kind! I'm a bit rusty).

 

It was late by the time they made it back to the bureau. A whole day of chasing leads that ended up in dark, empty corners – much like any normal day. Dana Scully found herself more reflective than usual, feelings of futility clinging to her, feelings she found she couldn’t shake. She wondered what she would be doing right now if five years ago she hadn’t accepted the assignment to debunk the theories of Agent Fox Mulder. He was beside her now, expertly reverse parking as he’d done a thousand times before in this exact same spot. For all the weird, wonderful and unexplainable phenomenon they’d encountered, they always ended up right where they were supposed to be. She looked at him from the corner of her eye – he was undaunted, his shoulders straight, even a hint of a smile at his lips. He was ever eager and hopeful, and she wondered, not for the first time, how he kept it up despite the world’s grievances against him. She was still learning to cope with it.

  
“Hey, Scully, something on your mind?” he asked softly, a twinkle in his eyes as if he found something amusing.

  
Scully couldn’t help but smile a little back, despite her bone-weariness. “No. I’m fine, Mulder. Just tired.”

  
“We can sleep in the office,” Mulder said. He patted down his trousers, “have you got your keys?”

  
Scully checked her pockets. “Damnit! I think I left them on Frohike’s desk, right before we left.”

  
After a moment, Mulder put his hand under his seat and flipped the lever, sending the back of it flying.

  
“Mulder!” his head hit the back of the seat with a thump as he fell along with it. He rubbed his head and looked at her pathetically.

 

Scully laughed. “What on earth are you doing?”

  
“You’re tired,” he said. “Thought I’d take a nap, too.”

  
“It’s four a.m. I want to curl up under the covers of my own bed, in my silk pyjamas beside the comforting red glow from my heater and fall into a very deep sleep. I don’t want a short nap in a cold car in the fbi basement next to my co-worker,” she said drily.

  
“Co-worker?” he raised an eyebrow. Their eyes met in the dim light, before Scully looked away. “That’s colder than the car, Scully.”

  
“Friend,” she corrected quickly. “You know, I’ve always tried to separate work and friendships, but with you it’s impossible.”

  
“Your other co-workers don’t invite you to nap in their cars, I take it,” Mulder quipped, sliding his hands under his head, stretching languorously.

  
“Other co-workers? There’s only you, Mulder.” She meant it as an offhand joke, but the words sunk into her mind and permeated into the silence around them. “I don’t think Skinner’s the type to stay out this late, and I think I’d drop dead if Agent Spender suggested anything like that,” she added awkwardly. It occurred to her as she spoke how euphemistic it sounded. She felt her face flush. Late night talks were not her forte, she always revealed more than she meant to.

  
Mulder cleared his throat. “I have another jacket on the back seat, if you want.”

  
“What?”

  
“For the cold.” Scully’s brows knit together. He’s serious about this. Of course he is.

  
“We have to be back here at seven sharp or Skinner will kick our asses. By the time you get home you’ll be lucky to get half an hour’s rest.”

  
She rolled her eyes.

  
“Fine, Mulder,” she said at length, adjusting her seat and removing the seatbelt. She stared up at the car roof, where little glow in the dark planets stared back at her.

  
“Two bucks at a dollar store,” he explained. “Bargain.”

  
“I wish I could say I’m surprised but I’m not,” she said, pursing her lips in amusement. Scully reached up a hand to trace one with her finger. “I think if I ever had a child, I’d put stars above their head where they sleep. There’s something transformative about it. To be so close to the stars you can touch them. Close enough to touch, but far away enough to be invited to dream of the possibilities.”

  
Mulder studied her face for a long time. She could feel his eyes on her as a smile entered his voice, “Yeah, I like the idea of that.”

  
“’Night, Mulder,” she said as her eyes began to close. She heard rustling as Mulder moved, leaning over the back seat to grab his jacket. He arranged it across her gently.

“Sweet dreams, Scully.” She opened her eyes for a fraction of a second, taking in his closeness and the nutty scent around him, which she supposed came from the sunflower seeds he ate so frequently. She gave him a small smile as he settled back into the seat beside her.

  
The minutes ticked by, but Scully was unnerved by how quiet he was. It was like he wasn’t even breathing. When she opened her eyes, she noticed they were facing one another. He looked so peaceful with his eyes closed. She mentally traced the contours of his face, the way his jaw was set, firm and a little tense. Frowning, she unconsciously moved a little closer. From this intimate angle, she noticed the sleeping shadows beneath his eyes, stained almost a purple hue.

  
“Mulder, you haven’t been sleeping lately, have you?” His eyes flew open at her clinically observant tone, and he rubbed at them wearily.

  
“How can you tell?”

  
“Dark periorbital circles. Could be hereditary, a side effect of medication, allergies, eczema, stress – god knows we have enough of that – iron deficiency, skin pigmentation abnormalities like periorbital hyperpigmentation... but I’m going with an educated guess based off of the fact that it’s four in the morning and you’re energetic and alert, like your body is used to being up at this time.”

  
“You know, Dr. Scully, some people attribute dark circles to old age. But as an optimist, I like to think in fifteen years time I’ll be blissfully happy, sleeping well, with not a periorbital circle to be seen.”

  
“Mock me all you want, Mulder, but I’m not wrong. You’re not tired.”

  
“Hey, I’m napping with you, aren’t I?”

  
Scully sighed, heaving her shoulders dramatically. “ _I’m_ tired. And unlike... yawning, for instance, tiredness is not a contagious form of empathy, of social bonding, you can’t just mimic it for it to occur.”

  
Mulder laughed softly, his voice muffled by his arm thrown across his face. “I’m not trying to bond with you, Scully. Go to sleep.”

  
Scully was quiet for a moment while Mulder turned away from her. “Mulder?”

  
He shifted around again to face her, “hmm?”

  
“When I had cancer, you refused to believe the possibility that I could die. It’s one of the only times I’ve ever seen you deny so vehemently that something unexplainable was possible. Extra-terrestrial life, monsters, things that other people fear... the unknown... you thrive on it, it drives you – the dark is your guiding light. The intensity of your belief is so strong that yes, I do worry about you, because it clouds your judgement in the face of harsher realities-”

  
“Scully, it’s beginning to sound like that’s what keeps you up at night,” Mulder said quietly, reaching out a hand to trail along the soft skin beneath her eyes. His hand, so big and rough to touch, felt like silk against her as she felt the urge to turn her face to it and kiss his palm. Scully felt her face go red again, and was thankful for the shadowy car and the seats that separated them.

  
“I worry that you get so wrapped up in the excitement and expectation of what you want to find that you fail to see the possibility of inevitably discovering what you might not want to,” she whispered. Mulder’s hand ghosted, lingering, down Scully’s neck and she froze, before realising he had caught her golden cross between his fingers, twisting it thoughtfully.

  
“I believe...” he said hesitantly, “that the truth is in the possibilities. It was possible you’d die, but it was also possible you’d live. And you did. Hope, Scully. That’s what I believe in.”

  
“I know,” she murmured. “I do, too. I want to believe. That the answers are out there, that we’ll find them. I hope you never lose that hope. But I just want you to be careful.”

Mulder smiled, a gentle, fragile thing that filled her with warmth. The stillness of the night and the obscuring shadows around them making her bold, Scully reached down and held his hand tightly in her own.

  
“You wanna know what keeps me up at night?” he asked softly. Scully gazed more intently at him.

  
“I keep having this horrible, repeating nightmare of Skinman showing up to work in a red speedo. I can’t get the image out of my head. It haunts me. I’m thinking of opening up an X file-“

  
“Shut up, Mulder.”

  
Scully, overcome with the tiredness she had protested for an hour, soon fell asleep, her small, light breaths suddenly the only noise in the world. Mulder shifted a little, still holding tight to her small hand in his. He had not had the chance to tell her what had been keeping him awake at night, because for once in his life it wasn’t just a recurring dream of Samantha, but the memory of Scully lying in a darkened hospital room, so small and sick, as he could only fall to his knees and cry with the sheer weight of what that might entail. It was a truth they both knew - he could not live without her.

* * *

 

They awoke to a sharp tapping. Scully jumped up, alert, seeing Walter Skinner at her window. He squinted through the glass and then stepped back, adjusting his tie and looking away uncomfortably. Scully realised she was still holding Mulder’s hand, and she wrenched it free. Mulder leaned across her and scrolled the window down.

  
“Good morning, Skinner,” Mulder said, cheerily oblivious with a wide smile on his face.

  
“We, uh, got back pretty late from our assignment last night so we stayed in the car. Didn’t get much sleep, sir!” Scully laughed awkwardly, running her fingers through her hair in an attempt to brush it. Skinner’s mouth was pressed into a thin line as his eyes darted from Mulder to Scully and back again.

  
“Too much information, Agent Scully,” he said at last. “I’ll see you both in my office in twenty minutes.”


End file.
